I tried your solution. Unfortunately it didn't work. It can't umounr /dev. Says it's busy. I exited the chroot and umounted proc and boot but /mnt/gentoo/dev it isn't able to umount. So I am forced to poweroff or reboot.

I had the same problem, but then I realized that I forgot the "-l" option for the "umount"

I tried your solution. Unfortunately it didn't work. It can't umounr /dev. Says it's busy. I exited the chroot and umounted proc and boot but /mnt/gentoo/dev it isn't able to umount. So I am forced to poweroff or reboot.

I had the same problem, but then I realized that I forgot the "-l" option for the "umount"

Code:

umount -l /mnt/gentoo/dev

Maybe it helps you

Be careful, -l doesn't really umount the volume/partition. It just unlinks it everywhere and removes the entry in /etc/mtab, you are still writing on the former mounted volume.

umount -l is only useful, if you are 100% sure the volume isn't there any more, like an external USB stick that you removed and forgot to umount it first.

I have an original gentoo install on /dev/sda (which is an IDE Drive). From my working original install, i have created a new gentoo install on /dev/sdc (which is a new SATA drive). When I try and boot the new Gentoo install, I am having this same problem where the boot is hanging and not going any further.

The recent stage 3 archives (May 2011) are the first the include our new init
system OpenRC.
There are some quirks still that need some manual work to resolve.

NOTICE: Some places suggest enabling CONFIG_DEVTMPFS in your kernel.
This is a workaround which will make your system boot, but is not a proper
fix.

The most typical symptom you might experience is that the system does not boot
after you have completed the installation. To fix this, you have to execute
the following steps.
If you read this during your installation, you can fix this while still on the
LiveCD, if not, please reboot your machine into the LiveCD environment, just
like you did while installing.

The following instructions assume that you have mounted your complete Gentoo
filesystem in /mnt/gentoo/ EXCEPT for the bind-mount of /dev.

One thing that bit me when I went to update /dev (thanks, Neddy) was that I didn't
remove the existing /dev/null file, and either mknod didn't give an error, or I missed
it. Might be worth checking that /dev is empty before adding the essential nodes.

Will

(And if you use lvm, don't forget to add it to the boot runlevel, along with udev
in sysinit).

I have an original gentoo install on /dev/sda (which is an IDE Drive). From my working original install, i have created a new gentoo install on /dev/sdc (which is a new SATA drive). When I try and boot the new Gentoo install, I am having this same problem where the boot is hanging and not going any further.

[Edit: Sorry for being such an arse! I had created a little script which did all the steps in the install, and one of the things it did was mount --rbind /dev /mnt/gentoo/dev which obviously invalidated the whole process. What an idiot.]_________________"I'm a Snake if we Disagree" - Jethro Tull, "Bungle in the Jungle"

Last edited by Rinkhals on Fri Jul 01, 2011 4:12 pm; edited 1 time in total

thanks. i decided to try to install gentoo ( for the first time!) from within an arch install on my laptop. i was starting to get frustrated because I couldn't figure out what I did wrong. it's up and running and now compiling kde-meta so I really appreciate the help

the fix described by NeddySeagoon in the first place fixed my issues. Thank you for that!

Is this issue actually fixed in current stage3 snapshots? If it is not: I'd like to understand what makes this take so long to fix it. I'm allready addicted to Gentoo - so no risk to loose a user here But if someone tries to use Gentoo for the first time, spends several hours in installing it the manual way and ends up with a not booting system he wouldn't consider to use this distribution, I guess.
Another point is, that this fix looks quite simple to me: Just have 3 files created and it works. What makes it so difficult to add these files to the stage files?

I don't want to attack anybody - I'd just like to understand this to tighten my understanding of Gentoo's internel organisation and build - process, since I often had the feeling that issues are difficult to solve and to track in Gentoo (had several bugs filed with strange workflows and results lately)._________________http://www.marc-richter.info

This brings me back to my question/statement: There seems to be something terribly wrong with Gentoo's update workflow and quality management, when a known issue with a simple and known fix, which prevents users from installing Gentoo with the corresponding manual, isn't fixed for one month and 8 days now!_________________http://www.marc-richter.info

This brings me back to my question/statement: There seems to be something terribly wrong with Gentoo's update workflow and quality management, when a known issue with a simple and known fix, which prevents users from installing Gentoo with the corresponding manual, isn't fixed for one month and 8 days now!

I raise this question as well after spending two days trying to install. I am also disgusted by this.

Also, it seems the when setting up the file systems with the handbook, ext3 is actually ext4 or least I had to add the ext4 drivers to get to the point where I find this error which is a month old and minor.

It does suck but there may be more work required behind the scenes than it takes to do the simple fix. I think that just mentioning this fix in the handbook for now would be fine as it takes less than a minute to fix. Unfortunately I lack the knowledge to be able to troubleshoot and try to come up with a fix for the issue, but I view this as an inconvenience more than anything else, and it will take more than a minor setback to stop me from using Gentoo.

Exactly this "required work behind the scenes" I'd like to know about. What does it take to do such a fix?

I don't want to anybody misunderstand me: I have a very high opinion about the Gentoo - Developers and the overall quality of Gentoo! But from time to time it looks "from the outside" like there's pure chaos in the development. Bugs not even looked at for months, known and perfectly tested fixes not distributed to the current stages, documentation timed out (which is known, since if one asks in the #gentoo on freenode or this forum he get's the answer how to ship around the issue), etc. Maybe it is necessary to rethink the workflow of Gentoo? Because I see that the developers know what they do - but sometimes it looks like they just cannot continue their work because of missing permissions, lacking reviews, etc.

Is there a developer out there who might briefly draft the steps necessary for a fix like this to reach the current stages or even the needed steps to take until such a hint is written to the handbook? That would be very interesting to understand Gentoo's insides and the "work behind the scenes".

I already am on the lists. But all I see are the discussions, not the workflow around them. What you can see on that lists for example are questions and discussions between the devs. Finally, you read something like "I now have changed x or y" - but who is in charge to write changes to the core - files or because of the rights he has the possibility to do so, you cannot see._________________http://www.marc-richter.info

As I've posted further up the thread, a lot of effort went into checking out the upgrade path from baselayout1 to baselaoout2, so that is fairly smooth.

However, the weekly stage3 autobuilds were not tested ubtil baselayout2 actually went stable and the issues here were discovered.
This made life difficult for new users. The rest is history, as the stages are now fixed._________________Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

I'm using the 2011-08-11 minimal CD (I'm returning to Gentoo and real linux after using Windows and Ubuntu for too long), x86 (AMD Sempron, 1.5GB RAM) and am having boot issues.

Everything goes fine up until kernel config. I've done it manually (make menuconfig from /usr/src/linux with the latest gentoo sources) and automagically (genkernel). No matter which method I use, when I go to reboot I have two issues.

1) Booting into Gentoo. It cannot find a valid root system even though everything is listed exactly like it needs to be according to the Installation Guide.

/dev/sda1 /boot
/dev/sda2 swap
/dev/sda3 /
/dev/sda4 /home

(with options set properly, of course)

The only things I can think of is that /dev/sda3 is ext3 and /dev/sda4 is ext4.

2) Booting in to Windows. hd1,1 (hd1,0 is taken up by the recovery partition put there by Compaq) is valid, but it just sits there after I select it and hit enter in GRUB (Windows XP SP3, fwiw).

All the operations performed before unmounting from the minimal live CD and rebooting seem to go well, I get no errors to report (genkernal and manual kernel config complain about one certain flag not being found but since the Installation Guide doesn't address it and it doesn't seem to affect the rest of the system, I have been assuming it's a non-issue).

Do I need to make my /home and / partitions the same? I figured using genkernel support for ext3 and ext4 would be automagically included, if this is not the case...? I know when I configured the kernel manually, I included full support for ext2, 3, and 4. I compiled everything into the kernel I could instead of having to mess with modules. Is there anyway to automatically generate a valid modules load file (modules.conf, iirc)? I have quite a few options selected (but not nearly all) to make sure all my hardware works. This is really frustrating, I was hoping my memory wasn't rose-tinted (I don't remember having these problems in the past, but a forum search might prove me wrong :p), or else I've just gotten really stupid._________________AIM: pres CTHULHU ICQ: 18115568 Yahoo: the_spoon.geo

As your system cannot find a root filesystem, its not got as far as reading /etc/fstabl, which is on the root filesystem.

It would be useful to have some of your kernel panic message, in particular the part that reads unknown-block (x,y) as the numbers tell a lot about the reasn the root filesystem cannot be mounted.

Here are the main reasons, is some sort of logical order.

1. Your kernel must have the partition type code included or it can't read the partition table.
On a PC, its usually MSDOS Partition tables.

2. You must have SCSI disk support built in. It must be <*>, not <M> think about it. SCSI disk support is needed to mount the root filesystem, If the SCSI disk module is a module located on the root filesyatem, how will you mount the root filesystem to read a module you need to mount the root filesystem.

3. Your low lever chipset driver, probably from the SATA menu must be build in as <*>

4. Your root filesystem driver must also be built in. <*> not <M>

5. you must install your kernel properly.

That really is all you need to boot from an internal drive.
Genkernel will make you a fully modular kernel with an initrd. The initrd is a temporary root filesystem that aboids the requirements above.

For detailed help, please post your lspci output.

Linux tends to autoload needed modules these days, there are three kernel module loading mechanisims.
The only thing you will need to load in the modules file is your network card module._________________Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.